by Dave Hurteau

I recently got back from a Louisiana turkey hunt with Synergy Outdoors, the umbrella company of Evolved Harvest, Barnett Crossbows, Flextone Game Calls, Wildgame Innovations, and Wildgame Nation TV. It was a very good hunt as these things go, partly because of the generosity of the hosts and the cooperation of the birds, but mostly because the company reps showed me some honest-to-goodness innovative and useful new products that I can pass along to you without feeling like I’m shilling as payback—which they know I won’t do.

Anyway, we’ll save that for another blog.

For now, I’d rather talk about hunting with a guide, which is commonplace on industry hunts. There’s no question that I would much rather kill a critter on my own--especially a turkey; if I don’t call the bird in myself, I don’t feel like I earned it. That’s why if anyone asks me if I killed a bird in Louisiana, I say no, but my guide, "Mike Miller the Turkey Killer," shown here with his camouflage bible and the bird in question, certainly did, even though I fired the shot.

by Dave Hurteau

One perceptive— and perhaps a little lucky— reader will soon hear the rumble of a delivery truck, carrying his spanking new Bowtech Invasion CPX compound bow. Is it you? Well let’s see now...

The actual gross B&C scores of the four bucks shown are as follows:

Buck #1, taken by Paul Ranft, measures 171 4/8.

Buck #2, taken by Jayson Nunn, goes 155 1/8. (I know, I guessed too low, too. The downward angle makes this tall and tight rack look smaller than it actually is—but we verified the score twice. Also, Nunn, I’m told, is a big boy, whose presence in a photo makes any buck’s rack look smaller. I’m seriously impressed at how many of you put him in the high 140s to mid 150s.)

By Dave Hurteau

This is Whitetail 365, so let me say first that when I barged into the wooded creek bottom, I sent a doe and fawn careening through the skunk cabbages. There. The sun was up. The tom wouldn’t stay on the roost for long. So I shot down the slope, hopped the creeklet, scrambled up the far side, and called. Too late. He barked at eighty yards and incoming.

by Dave Hurteau

A duck-hunting post on Whitetail 365? I know. Sorry. I couldn’t help myself.

I’m just feeling so badly for Bourjaily and DiBenedetto. Those poor guys. And it just so happens that this morning I took F&S Managing Editor Jean McKenna to my favorite local marsh, which was lousy with woodies and teal the day before she came. (Just as the turkeys were gobbling like crazy just before she arrived this past spring. And the deer were feeding early just prior to her showing up last fall.) But as Jean drove north with her camo and waders and usual tough luck, a sleet-and-snow storm deposited a couple inches and sent the most of those early ducks packing.